Clare Bates

Clare Bates – “For 24 years I was privileged to work with & photograph the amazing collections that make up The National Museums Liverpool, to work with curators, scholars and collections from every corner of the world, producing images for exhibitions, publications, records and conservation work. I have also been lucky enough to work for private museums, stately homes & estates, cathedrals and private collectors and individuals. Having spent the majority of my 26 years as a photographer producing pure record photography for the purposes of exhibitions, publication & conservation work and been restricted to studios and darkrooms, I have now returned to my first love, which is trying to capture & create new and different images of the world around us through the medium of landscape photography.”

“I am at my absolutely my happiest when I am out in the fresh air, with a camera in my hands, experiencing the elements (almost always with my dog at my side) where the camera becomes a sketch book. It’s almost therapy, it relaxes and calms me. I am a very solitary photographer and use the space that the solitude affords me to try and “see” properly, to experience what is going on around me and to capture that fleeting image. It has always been art in one form or another for me, for as long as I can remember I have always been content when producing an image of some description, whether it be with pencils, paint, or a camera. I use the shapes, the colours, the space and the light that naturally occur in nature to create the picture.”